Ty Parvis: Sang “Honolulu Baby”

I grew curious about Ty Parvis (Tyrone Parvis, 1912-1990) on account of his best known performance — he’s the young man (all of 21) who sings the irresistible song “Honolulu Baby” in one of Laurel and Hardy’s best known comedies Sons of the Desert (1933). My sources for the few known scraps, as in so many similar cases, are Lord Heath and the gang at Nitrateville.

Parvis was a child performer from Vancouver, Washington, who started out performing in vaudeville and musical comedies, and on radio. His own promotional material and IMDB list him as portraying a “Boy Singer” in The Jazz Singer (1927). Naturally, Jolson is the only one who does any singing in that picture. I’m not about to watch it again to see if I can spot him this morning; my guess is that Parvis is a walk-on in a shot or two. His short screen career, such as it is, begins in earnest with three Vitaphone shorts released in 1930: Gates of Happiness, emceed by Pat West; School Days, with Jeanie Lang, who’d been in The King of Jazz with Paul Whiteman; and College Capers. He is credited as a chorus boy in Gold Diggers of 1933. Then his big moment in Sons of the Desert. The following year he got his biggest role, though in a more obscure movie, the 1934 Hal Roach short Music In Your Heart. He has a key role in that short as Billy Gilbert’s son, in a cast that also includes Billy Bletcher,Virginia Karns (Mother Goose in Babes in Toyland), Harry Bowen, Harry Bernard, and Charlie Hall. It’s directed by Charley Chase. This one is available on Youtube at present and is a delight.

After this, there’s record of him taking a sea voyage to Japan in 1935. Whether for business or pleasure, I don’t know, but I hope he didn’t stay long, for the following year saw a coup attempt and martial law in Tokyo, followed by the launch of the second Sino-Japanese War, which would launch Tojo’s rise to power. At some point he formed a dance team with Edythe Bither (billed as Regina Jordan). They performed in night clubs and on cruise ships, and she became his wife. Parvis also advertised the ability to do some impressions in addition to his singing and dancing skills, and worked as an emcee. In later years the Parvises operated a beauty parlor in New York. Their last years were spent in Las Vegas.

For more on vaudeville history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,and for more on silent and slapstick comedy read  Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.